


my eyes are open but i'm still sleeping

by luminesce



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Cybernetics, Gen, Human Experimentation, M/M, Minor Violence, War, baekchen is only implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26545606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luminesce/pseuds/luminesce
Summary: Jongdae opens his mouth but nothing comes out.Baekhyun, he wants to say.“Don’t worry,” a familiar voice speaks up, and Jongdae briefly wonders if he’s the one being addressed. He looks up and sees a pair of brown eyes look at him. “You’ll see him again tomorrow.”A smile, and a soft pat on his arm. Jongdae goes back to sleep.
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Kim Jongdae | Chen
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14
Collections: Lil' Something Fest 2020





	my eyes are open but i'm still sleeping

**Author's Note:**

> i have come a long way. i offer you this small gift as we celebrate our lovely jongdae's birthday! thank you to the mods for granting me an extension♡ and to all my friends who have been nothing but supportive and sweet as i write and finish this piece♡
> 
> disclaimer: i am **NOT** a science whiz, nor a tech genius. i don't 100% know what the future is gonna look like, nor how robots and AIs might be coexisting with us as i speak. my fingers had a mind of its own while i was typing down the entirety of this fic, and i have done as much research as i can to make things sound seamless and smooth. please be gentle with me ꒰◍ˊ◡ˋ꒱
> 
> p.s. title is taken from dynamic duo & chen's [You](https://youtu.be/K_Y-SYuH8JU)!

Wherever Byun Baekhyun goes, Kim Jongdae follows—this is a working theory. Even if Baekhyun never looks back, Jongdae is there. Even when Baekhyun walks into fire, Jongdae goes after him.

Kim Jongdae at twenty four is like a shell, rough and scraped around the edges, but something sparks in him if you care enough to peek inside. _Like Baekhyun_ , he supposes, _he once cared_. And for everything Jongdae was to Baekhyun—to have tasted what it was like, to have known how it felt like to be cared for—once has always been enough.

“Today is a new day,” he says to no one in particular as he puts one foot in front of the other in calculated steps, as if he’s testing out a new pair of limbs fresh out of his wardrobe—not that he ever needed to get himself replacements, his were working just fine.

Jongdae checks his watch, a bright red flashing back at him in fixed lines. It’s eleven fourteen and he sets the stopwatch to start.

_I’m coming for you._

He heard it first before he saw it.

Loud crackling sounds from colossal slabs of concrete, presumably steel rods falling from in between drowning out screams of people in pain, in fear.

He looks behind and sees it.

It happened so fast, but he can swear he saw it in slow motion—a piece of concrete covered with angry reds and oranges, glowing, coming straight towards him from up above. He's thinking _I'm going to die_. A split second, and first thing he feels is hot white burning on his shoulder dragging down his arm.

And then everything was black.

Until there was light, and it was blinding.

It's a hazy mess inside his mind—he feels like he's _floating_ , in the middle of nowhere and somewhere at the same time. Everything is fuzzy, but he recalls the concrete cause of his demise and _burning_. He blinks open his eyes a few times and squints at the too bright light, and is reminded of how much darkness he saw last.

"Brain activity slightly rising," he hears a voice say. He hears more, but they're all hushed. Quiet with an equally quiet buzzing sound in the background (like the sound of a working machine, he realizes).

"Experiment zero, zero, twenty-one," he hears again.

His eyes softly flutter to a close.

He wakes with a slight throbbing in his head. It's not too painful, but it bothers him enough to try and lift a hand to his temple only to fail because _god, that hurt_.

As he opens his eyes to awareness, he sees white from the walls to the floors to the coats of the people bunched on his right.

_A hospital?_ He wonders.

"I see you've awaken."

"Where am I?" He says, voice cracking mid-sentence sounding almost foreign to him. The words taste a little different on his mouth, letters rolling off his tongue with a faint metallic tang.

A young spectacled woman comes up to him clad in white from head to toe save for the dark, somewhat purple hair framing her face, cascading down her shoulders in alluring waves. Her lips are drawn in a small smile, eyes tired but warm nonetheless.

"You're in my lab, 21. How are you feeling?"

He clears his throat, "21?"

"Ah, yes. Pardon me for jumping straight into questions." The woman settles her tablet on the table near his bed. "My name is Bae Joohyun. I run the Neurology and Cybernetics department here in the facility and I'm also in charge of you, experiment number 0021. It's nice to finally meet you—as in actually meet you, while you're awake."

"What do you mean _experiment_?"

He's startled. Neurology, cybernetics, experiment— _what the hell?_

"Well, you see," she starts as she pushes her glasses higher up her nose, "we took you in and saved you. What do you remember last?" Her voice is soft. Inviting. He shivers.

"Chaos. All around me," he says. "Falling debris everywhere, and something felt hot and then I couldn't feel my shoulder—" he abruptly halts. He tries moving both his shoulders and, with a silent sigh of relief and slight confusion why the left one feels a bit stiff than the other, stretches his arms.

"Your shoulder?" Bae Joohyun inquires further.

"Was _burning_. Down my arm." Another sigh. "And then it was dark."

The woman nods, picking up her tablet once more and looks intently at him. "A year ago there were six explosions in the city, spread throughout the day into the evening. The same night—you were brought into my lab, half of you missing, and I wondered if they made a mistake."

A whole year, he repeats. He must have had a pained look on his face when she chuckles lightly and shakes her head.

"Turns out it wasn't a mistake after all. Although your body was in a horrible state and I thought you were gonna be a waste of time— _I'm sorry_ —part of your brain was still miraculously intact, and I couldn't just not try."

She taps and swipes on her device and asks a soft _Pictures?_ to him, to which he reluctantly nods, and she lets him see.

And so he sees.

There are multiple photographs of the same body in different angles, and every single one tugs deep within his soul, his _everything_ aching in a way he's never ached before.

Half of him missing—from his head down to his torso, streams of crimson both bright and dark oozing from where his flesh is roughly ripped apart. His right eye in the photograph is wide open, and he unconsciously blinks as he looks over his features in the aftermath of the explosion.

He vaguely remembers why and how he was kilometers away from the blast. It was the 23rd month since the war started and the North was gradually increasing their nukes in size, with intentions to completely leave the South in ruins and inhabitable by the end of the year. He had been a soldier, by choice, standing alongside his comrades the day their base became a mere box, ticked off a checklist and destroyed by those in seats of power in the North.

He tells all of this to Bae Joohyun, and she's listening intently with attentive eyes, replying in hums of encouragement as her fingers ever so quickly tap away on her tablet.

"Finally, I get to know who you are. You have a file, of course, but it's different hearing it from you directly. So far none of your systems are failing, as we speak, and this is a milestone for every single one in this lab—the whole facility, even."

_My systems_. His eye twitches together with his pulse. He asks, "I'm not… fully human anymore, aren't I?"

"No," she breathes, "you're a soldier."

And the way she says it brings a shiver down his spine. Somehow he knows she's talking about a different kind of soldier, and he's not sure what to feel about it.

Bae Joohyun goes on about his _new_ body, modified and adjusted like it's a toy robot for these people to play with. His left shoulder down to his arm to the entire left side of his hip—it's enclosed in a smooth, black glass-like plating made up of polymer and nanomachines. They're hidden under synthetic flesh to purposely make him look like a normal human being _(and not part robot, for lack of a better word, she adds)_.

"Here," she states as she shows him an image of a brain on her device, "is where it gets interesting. Majority of your brain are implants, the main one snug on your cerebral cortex, and they're designed to work around your brain—the real one. The destroyed half of your skull had been regrown, along with the skin on your scalp and the rest of your hair. We'll be running a few more tests before we completely take you off hibernation, but so far so good, 21."

Her voice is delighted in a comforting way, and he's starting to get bothered being called a _number_.

"Jongdae, please," he says, and she smiles.

"Very well, Jongdae. Welcome to EXODUS."

_EXODUS_ , Jongdae comes to learn, is a high profile facility standing on the west borders of the city, far from prying eyes but close enough to not attract unwanted suspicions. There are several high-tech laboratories inside a second building, connected to the main building through the annex on the third floor. It's where he's been hidden and taken care of in the past twelve months.

The labs conduct experiments on technological advancements on humans. Some are volunteers, some are hand-picked usually from the military, and some are occasional rescues like Jongdae, dying people who could have a second shot at life. These labs, and the facility as a whole, are heavily backed up by the government. Synthetic and modified humans, cyborgs like himself, robots—EXODUS has them all, and from the moment he woke up, Jongdae has had an inkling about the bigger picture the facility had in mind.

EXODUS, Jongdae is coming to learn, is where he meets the man who changes the course of his new-found life.

A lab rat, he supposes, is sort of what he’s become. Jongdae, after all, is the first successful cyborg with cortex implants. It wasn’t as bad as the old movies depicted it.

“How are you feeling today?”

Joohyun, as how she told Jongdae to call her the morning after he was taken off the hibernation pod, appears in his quarters free of her usual white coat.

“I’ve had progress from yesterday’s runs. It’s taking me less time to go around the blocks and I can mostly finish the whole floor in less than seven minutes. My interface had also been easier to navigate, I could go three minutes without my vision being blocked with stats and vital signs."

His doctor (or scientist, he's not so sure anymore) laughs, and her eyes crinkle at the ends. "I asked about _you_ , not to give me a progress report."

"Oh," is all what Jongdae says.

She gestures to the door. "Well, today you're coming with me to meet Lieutenant Colonel Byun's son. You'll be starting training tomorrow, soldier."

He then realizes she's wearing formal attire and he looks down at his own—leather cargo pants and a big, bulky jacket. A quick glance at the two-way mirror that took up the whole left wall of his room lets him see his hair, a mess of curls falling right on top of his eyebrows, his sharp jawline and a ghost of a smile resting on his lips. He had realized some time after he woke up from hibernating that he looks pretty much the same before the explosion.

Jongdae had met the Lieutenant Colonel a few days ago and it had been a relatively pleasant experience.

And when Jongdae meets First Lieutenant Byun, clad in his dark, moss green uniform with a lone silver bar glinting under the fluorescent lights in the hallway across the Meeting Room, he's pleasantly surprised.

The older Byun is standing behind him, a stark contrast to how his son is holding himself—standing as straight as he's supposed to be, impatient right foot tapping on the floor.

The younger Byun has pretty features, Jongdae notices. If only his face wasn't in a scowl, eyes directed towards Jongdae in a sideways glance and eyebrows scrunching in frustration. Jongdae sees him huff a resigned sigh out of his thin pink lips, in a way he thinks is accepting defeat.

The Lieutenant Colonel introduces them, his own uniform branded with a silver oak leaf, and leaves them with a stern pat on their shoulders.

"Baekhyun," the man says.

"Jongdae, sir."

"I said," he steps closer to Jongdae, " _Baekhyun_."

Training has been nice, Jongdae concludes four months later. He's been known to excel in physical combat, even managing to pin Baekhyun down a handful times—once when they went outside the facility, two months into training, and it might have been Jongdae's favorite day post-hibernation.

It was at a clearing a few miles off the grid and Baekhyun had brought him there to spar and get some fresh air. The latter always talks about air, and suffocation, and _breathing_.

After every day, Baekhyun reminds Jongdae to breathe.

And Jongdae has to admit Baekhyun had been a great teacher—he clearly was a great student himself during his younger years. Baekhyun is quick and precise in his movements, moving only when he deems necessary. Jongdae had found out that Baekhyun is a skilled target shooter, from his hand-held pistols to the big, heavy ones always kept in storage.

Although he also shows enough that he doesn't enjoy being Jongdae's _caretaker_ , as Baekhyun calls it, Jongdae has decided he doesn't mind. He'll take Baekhyun any other day than anyone else in the whole facility.

He'd taken quite a liking to the First Lieutenant's presence, from his amazing intellect to the unorthodox way he shows he cares—although Jongdae thinks Baekhyun would die first before he let Jongdae know he cared.

The thing about First Lieutenant Byun Baekhyun, though, is that he's odd.

Or _acting_ odd, especially often these days, but Jongdae thinks Byun Baekhyun is just an odd person altogether.

He talks in riddles and profound wisdom. He answers questions with questions—just like the other night when he brought Jongdae to the rooftop, showing the latter his small row of flowers, beautifully vibrant under moonlight.

"Why do you stay?" Jongdae had asked, slightly shivering in May's night breeze. He diverts his eyes from the sky to look at Baekhyun whose eyes were as beautiful as twinkling stars. They hardly ever show mirth, but Jongdae catches them gleam sometimes—muted, but it's there.

Baekhyun shrugged.

"Why do you let me?"

_It's not like I have a choice_ , Jongdae had wanted to say. But he didn't, because it felt wrong, because he had wanted Baekhyun to not leave even if he's a little odd sometimes.

But most especially whenever they pass by Jongdae's department— _Neurology and Cybernetics_ —and Baekhyun becomes absolutely restless.

He's not a chatterbox, but he gets into storytelling when he starts. His long, pretty fingers become animated as he describes his old roommate's prosthetic mishaps. He's even started telling stories that go back during his childhood (and Jongdae decides he wants to keep hearing more) but one topic had always been brushed off—his parents.

And Jongdae had never asked. He has an inkling, like his inkling about the facility's bigger picture, and he figures it's best not to ask.

And Jongdae thinks he'll probably never know, but he gets it.

Jongdae thinks he gets Baekhyun a lot these days—in all his oddity.

It doesn't take long before Jongdae hears about Baekhyun's plans. To ruin, to destroy. Plans of everything being engulfed in flames.

And just like that—everything clicked. It's been a crazy few months since he's been in post-hibernation but nothing had made this much sense before.

_Synthetic and modified humans, cyborgs like me, robots—EXODUS is grooming us all to use as weapons in hopes to end the war._

"My mom was the first patient they tried cortex implants on," Baekhyun starts, "like patient zero, but there wasn't an outbreak, or anything."

Jongdae is surprised, and on the upper left corner of his vision he sees his vital signs pop up, his heartbeat steadily speeding.

"The experiment failed. When my mom woke up, she seemed fine, but her memory's been completely wiped out. Then the new body malfunctioned, rejected her brain, and it shut down. I saw everything."

Baekhyun has this specific look, when he starts to get fidgety and worried, and Jongdae thinks he doesn't like this look on him.

If one were to ask Jongdae what he thinks of the whole pseudo mission, he'd say it's been a long time coming.

But the thing with missions and plans and goals is that they never go accordingly, Jongdae reasons with Baekhyun.

"There's a semblance of comfort when things don't go the way they're supposed to. It reminds me of people and how they unravel in ways I never expect them to."

_Like you_ , Jongdae thinks.

Baekhyun trails daring, dainty fingers down his left arm. Almost familiar, which Jongdae thinks is funny, because Baekhyun's never touched him like this before.

"I find comfort in the things that stay the same," Jongdae says.

Like you, Jongdae wants to say.

Like it should be.

There's a small team of misfits crazy enough to go on board with Baekhyun's plans.

Baekhyun doesn't invite Jongdae aboard.

Jongdae invites himself over anyway.

Wherever Byun Baekhyun goes, Kim Jongdae follows—this is a fact. Even if Baekhyun never looks back, Jongdae is there. Even when Baekhyun walks into fire, Jongdae goes after him.

Kim Jongdae, at twenty five, is but a mere shell, rough and scraped around the edges, now hollow and empty if you care enough to peek inside. _Like Baekhyun_ , he supposes, _he once cared_. And for everything Baekhyun meant to Jongdae—once has always been enough.

And when he follows Baekhyun once more through the threshold at a particularly gloomy August morning, Jongdae thinks once will always be enough for this lifetime.

"How does the new implant feel?" Bae Joohyun asks through the microphone, her voice transmitting to the small speaker in the corner of Jongdae's room. He sees her short black hair swaying in the air as she turns from her swivel chair to look at him, through the floor-to-ceiling plexiglass covering the entirety of his left wall.

Jongdae shrugs. Indifferent. It's hard to feel things these days, he claims.

"I've modified the tests in the simulation and calibrated them a hundred times. You should be able to navigate through your right hemisphere with more ease than yesterday."

And so he nods.

_Today is a new day_.


End file.
